The headline of Tuesday’s issue of The Lantern (OSU’s school paper) read “It Could Be Worse”. That probably would have been fine on it’s own, but the Editors decided to run a photo of two Firefighters trying to fight a blaze. That’s pretty taste in it’s own right, but it gets worse when your fellow students think you’re comparing the National Championship to 9-11…..

The photo, which ran on the Sports page of The Lantern the day after the Buckeyes were defeated in the national championship game, showed two firefighters battling billowing smoke.

Above the firemen were the words, “It could be worse,” 10TV’s Maureen Kocot reported.

Based on comments left by readers on the The Lantern’s Web site, several people thought the photograph was taken during the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I think this is in very poor taste,” one person wrote. Another student wrote that “the people who put this cover together are fanatics, not fans,” Kocot reported.

The Lantern’s editor came out and said that in no way was this a depiction of 9-11 and that it’s actually a fire fight in South Korea (?)., and now today the paper has printed a non-apology apology….

On the front of Tuesday’s Sports section, The Lantern ran a photo of two firefighters battling a business fire in South Korea with the headline, “It could be worse.” No one on the staff, myself included, thought of Sept. 11, nor is this a picture of Sept. 11. This has raised a good question for debate: When we see smoke and firefighters, do our minds automatically assume it is Sept. 11? Isn’t the end goal of terrorism for us to continue to live in fear and associate every image with that day? The Lantern would never make light of such a catastrophe. We simply wanted Buckeye fans to know, it could be worse. A football loss isn’t the end of the world. Neither is this image.

I guess that’s a valid point if you think about it, and a great one to make, but not in this way. We’re talking about a Sports story and I think it’s going to be a long time (if ever) before a 9-11 joke/reference is going to be funny.